Within the field of audio telecommunications, there has been a large growth of voice message systems that provide an opportunity for a caller to leave a voice message if the desired recipient, or user, is unavailable. These voice message systems may be either local, supporting a single telecommunication circuit, or they may be network based, supporting multiple telecommunication circuits. A telecommunication circuit includes telephone lines within the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), in addition to other services (e.g. wireless). Typically, a user or recipient will establish a form of voice mailbox, where messages are collected, stored, and maintained according to the recipient's instruction. According to the recipient's instructions, the voice message system will respond to a caller and provide them with various options. Prior to recording a caller's voice message in the voice mailbox, the voice message system typically plays an outgoing announcement greeting.
Today's voice message systems typically provide recipients the ability to manage their announcement and greetings for the purpose of providing a personalized outgoing greeting to incoming callers. Typically, the recorded greeting serves to provide the caller with notification of the recipient's status, i.e. “I am out of the office today and will return on Monday. Please leave your name and number.” The voice message system often has the capability to store multiple outgoing greetings, though only one greeting may be active at a time. This active outgoing greeting is typically heard by the calling party, but not by the recipient, unless the recipient calls his or her own number directly, or checks the voice message administration area.
None of the current voice mail systems provide an ability to create multiple voice mail greetings and specify the greeting that should be used for a specific calling party or category of calling parties. Very often people have to travel for vacation or out of town for some reasons but do not have time to inform friends or relatives. Under these situations it's desirable that they be able to inform the necessary people where they can be reached. However, they would not like to provide these details to everyone that calls. There could be calls from telemarketers, sales people, criminals and other people that a person would not want to know that the person out of the house for an extended period or where the person can be reached. It is desirable to have multiple greetings and have the voice mail system play the appropriate greeting depending as a function of the identity of the caller. This way the most trusted friends and family members could be informed about the person's whereabouts and how to reach the person, while the others could simply be told to leave a message or just be disconnected without an opportunity to leave a message.
Thus, there is a need in the art for an improved voice mail system that provides the ability to create and use multiple voice mail greetings.